One More Round with Carlos Acevedo: Valero/DeMarco, Johnson/Mack, Adamek/Estrada, Shady Promoters, etc...

In this edition of One More Round, Carlos Acevedo gives his thoughts on this past weekend's boxing action along with a couple stories of promoter misconduct.  For more from Carlos, check out his blog, The Cruelest Sport.

Edwin Valero vs Antonio DeMarco

Wild man Edwin Valero showed signs of being civilized after flogging Antonio DeMarco Saturday night into a TKO stupor at the Arena Monterrey in Monterrey, Mexico.  It took longer than his first nine fights combined, but Valero, now 27-0 (27), eventually chopped down a game DeMarco, whose corner wisely called a halt to the drubbing after the ninth round.  There were no knockdowns.

Valero, now 27-0 with 27 knockouts, overcame a gulch of a cut on his forehead (courtesy of a stiff DeMarco forearm shiver) in round two and a few sharp counter right hands to take DeMarco apart round by round.

Valero showed more control than he has on many of the grainy Youtube clips that first fostered an interest in him.  Usually Valero starts each fight like a man who has consumed a gallon of Red Bull in his locker room before the ring walk and more often than not lays low an opponent before his caffeine high wears off.  Last night, however, Valero fought with more calculation than usual after settling down in the middle rounds, realizing, perhaps, that DeMarco was no Whyber Garcia.

DeMarco, 24, boxed patiently early, looking for openings and waiting for Valero to slow down, but Valero, blood streaming into his eye from the appalling wound gouged into his skull, never stopped throwing punches.  When Valero began to work the body and dance on the outside, in fact, it was DeMarco who decelerated quickly.

Again and again Valero, 28, beat DeMarco to the punch, crashing straight lefts—often doubling them up—over the top and cuffing DeMarco around with quick if artless combinations. Occasionally DeMarco responded with a neat one-two or a right hook, but his “Waiting For The Man” strategy left him in no shape to fight effectively by the time the eighth round began.

In fact, between the eighth and ninth rounds, DeMarco resembled a man just waking up with a serious hangover, and Romulo Quirarte, his trainer, was close to stopping the bout then and there.  Instead, DeMarco went out for one last shot and was given further rough treatment from the hardpunching Venezuelan, who posted one of the most impressive wins of his career.   

Still, Valero is far from a complete fighter.  He holds his hands way too low, his combinations are often sloppy, at times he is off-balance while on the attack, and some of his punches are so wide that a Mack truck could rumble through the arc of his blows, but Valero is action personified.

Despite his flaws, or perhaps because of them, Valero is a refreshing change of pace from the stars of track and field who currently dominate boxing.  Excitement is what spectators crave, and Valero, similar to Manny Pacquiao, seems to readily understand that relatively simple concept.  Too bad so many other flagpole sitters and mouse potatoes masquerading as prizefighters these days are not nearly as quick on the uptake.

Friday Night Fights featuring Glen Johnson vs Yusaf Mack

ESPN2 usually televises poor imitations of boxing, something along the lines of William Shatner singing “Tambourine Man” instead of Bob Dylan, but last Friday night was a pleasant exception that proved the rule. 

Glen Johnson whacked out clueless Yusaf Mack in six rounds, thereby keeping his name in the light heavyweight mix (as well as costing me money and feeding the voracious maw of an online sportsbook) and, in a fine clubfight involving two local scrappers before a raucous crowd, Ed Paredes blasted Joey Hernandez to smithereens with a sonic left hook in the second round of a grudge rematch.

Paredes, now 24-3-1, seemed to anticipate every move the wide-swinging Hernandez made, and took the fight to the smaller man from the opening bell.  When he felt like leading, he lead; when he felt like countering, he countered; and when he felt like anesthetizing Hernandez, who fell to 15-1-1, he brought out the anti-static silicon mask with one minute and seven seconds left in round two.  Paredes showed poise and smarts between the ropes and should be back on ESPN2 sooner rather than later.     

Tomasz Adamek vs Jason Estrada

Tomasz Adamek, who scored a tougher than expected twelve-round decision over Jason Estrada last night at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, will now most likely face Chris Arreola on HBO in April.  This is the kind of bogus match that HBO specializes in all too often lately.  What is really disturbing is the fact that HBO showed very little interest in Adamek when competitive fights were in the air.  Proposed bouts with Steve Cunningham and Bernard Hopkins went nowhere, but now that Adamek has the chance to be outweighed by—who knows?—40, 50, maybe even 60 pounds come April, he is HBO material.  Or is it materiel?  

It almost seems as if they were just waiting for the opportunity for Adamek to pop-up as an underdog with a decided size disadvantage.  Less than three years ago, in fact, Adamek was still a light heavyweight.  Arreola, whose basement competition earns him penthouse checks, gets the house edge once again, presumably because he consistently enters the ring without his lobster bib on.  

Adamek, 40-1, took enough shots from Estrada, 16-3, to give pause to any of his backers, of whom 10,123 braved the East Coast snowstorm to watch their hero struggle at times with a middling opponent.  Luckily for Adamek (and HBO), Estrada, with only four knockouts in his career, hits as hard as an aviatrix.  Adamek can now look forward to a big payday earned by participating in the latest HBO celebrity bout.  

Promoter Misconduct Part 1

Although boxing continues to be The Red Light District of Sports, one where wastrels and shadowy two-bit grifters thrive in poorly lit alleyways and dead end cul-de-sacs, you would be fairly stumped to find any news about it in the boxing press, devoted to lapping and fawning in equal measure.     

Last December, for example, when Melissa Hernandez pulled out of a fight against Holly Holm only hours before showtime at Isleta Casino and Resort in Albuquerque, New Mexico, promoters literally picked out a replacement from the crowd.

Audience participation may have been the dramatic m.o. for The Living Theater, but for boxing, it should be nixed outright.  Incredibly, organizers pulled the old “Is there a boxer in the house?” routine and came up with Victoria Cisneros, 3-6-2, in attendance.  Without a weigh-in, without a drug test, without a medical exam, Cisneros was allowed to swap punches with, reputedly, the top pound-for-pound female boxer in the world (all I know about Holly Holm is that her nickname, “Hottie,” is right on target) in a ten round bout.  Not only is this situation ludicrous, something out of Harold Langdon, say, or Laurel and Hardy, it is also downright criminal.

Although the Isleta Casino and Resort is located on sovereign Native American land, it should be forced to cooperate with sate commission officials, in this case New Mexico, to ensure proper safety and regulation procedures are followed.  Otherwise, unsanctioned fights will begin to proliferate, like Toughman bouts and backyard brawls, and draw the specter of danger and death, already omnipresent in boxing, that much closer to its participants.

Promoter Misconduct Part 2

In another case of boxing grubbiness, a preliminary boxer was recently stiffed by a promoter in a state, Michigan, which, apparently, might as well not have an athletic commission to begin with.  Dark rumors concerning Michigan boxing are aswirl, but this case, involving the pro debut of a boxer named Eddie Gates, is unlike much of what happens in boxing, actually verifiable.  Not many fighters speak up when bitten by the prizefighting flea-pit, but Gates made his fleecing public, telling Kevin Walters, editor of  SportsSummary.com, his story. Gates also lodged an official complaint with state authorities.   

After scoring a first-round TKO over Patrick Walker on a show promoted by Four Corner Productions in Warren, Michigan, on January 15th, Gates was denied payment by Jim Westmoreland, a matchmaker with iffy credentials.  “Gates claims that Westmoreland was upset at how quickly he defeated his Kokomo, Indiana opponent,” wrote Walters, “saying he should have “carried him” longer, apparently to make the fight look like a better match.  He also told SportsSummary that Westmoreland called him on Sunday and offered to arrange another win for him with what Westmoreland called “another bum.” 

Fortunately, while big name promoters are virtually immune to bad PR, low-level outfits, often with more to hide, are touchy about having light of any kind shined on their ill-lit shack-room doings.  Hours after Walters posted his story online, Four Corners Productions paid Gates in full.  If only more fighters, particularly in states with ineffectual commissions, would drop the “Stop Snitching” campaign, delinquent matchmakers and grubby promoters would not be so quick to act with impunity.  And if only more writers had the guts to call attention to some of these shenanigans—like Walters did—instead of sitting around shilling for promoters and trying to decide who is #10 in the official P-4-P sweepstakes, then things would improve in boxing across the board.

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For more from Carlos Acevedo, check out his blog: The Cruelest Sport